w! It's time you was out of the park!"

"Yes, I'll go," said he, and walked slowly to the gate.

It was ridiculous of him, of course, to writhe as he did under that
chance meeting. What else could he have expected? A hundred times
already he had told himself she had forgotten all about him, or, worse
still, she remembered him only to despise him. And a hundred times,
too, he had seen her in fancy beside the enemy who had stabbed him.

For Scarfe might have spared his precaution in begging Mrs Rimbolt not
to name him as Jeffreys' accuser. Jeffreys needed no telling to whom he
owed his ruin, and he needed no telling the reason why.

That reason had made itself clear this afternoon, at any rate, and as
the wretched outcast wandered out into the night, it seemed as if the
one ray of light which yesterday had glimmered for him, even across the
darkness, was now quenched for ever, and that there was nothing left
either to hope or dread.

He could not quit the park, but wandered round and round it, outside its
inhospitable palings, covering mile after mile of wet pavement, heedless
of the now drenching rain, heedless of his hunger, heedless of his
failing limbs.

The noisy streets had grown silent, and a clock near at hand had struck
two when he found himself on the little bridge which crosses the canal.
It was too dark to see the water below, but he heard the hard rain
hissing on its surface.

He had stood there before, in happier days, and wondered how men and
women could choose, as they sometimes did, to end their misery in that
narrow streak of sluggish water.

He wondered less now. Not that he felt tempted to follow them; in his
lowest depths of misery that door of escape had never allured him. Yet
as he stood he felt fascinated, and even soothed, by the ceaseless noise
of the rain on the invisible water beneath. It seemed almost like the
voice of a friend far away.

He had been listening for some time, crouched in a dark corner of the
parapet, when he became aware of footsteps approaching.

Imagining at first they were those of a policeman coming to dislodge the
tramp from his lurking-place, he prepared to get up and move on. But
listening again he remained where he was.

The footsteps were not those of a policeman. They approached fitfully,
now quickly, now slowly, now stopping still for a moment or two, yet
they were too agitated for those of a drunkard, and too uncertain for
those of a fugitive